Interactive and Input Devices, The Buxton Collection

Bill Buxton is a researcher for Microsoft. He's written a cool book that we saw early in this summer in this very blog. He's also been collecting interactive and input devices for decades. Although these items might not be showing up at our local museums anytime soon, we can still check them out online at the Buxton Collection. The collection takes us through a visual history of the input devices that have played their own role in creating and shaping our field.

Some highlights:

The General Magic Data Rover 840 with sweet physical metaphor action.





The Versatron Foot Mouse. One might think this is marketed towards someone with a medical condition or extreme environment, but no--it's marketed as an improvement over your everyday hand mouse. I think this bad boy from 1984 is exactly what you need for your ottoman if you're a laptop couch junkie.





Okay, I admit, I picked this delight from Zenith simply because it is called the Space Command SC 600-X. Why didn't that name stick? It's way cooler than "remote control" or heaven forbid "clicker."